The Vault Of Horror

 

Taking It EC

The Vault Of Horror
UK 1973 
Directed by Roy Ward Baker
Amicus/20th Century Fox  Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: A vault of spoilers. 

The Vault Of Horror was another of the Amicus portmanteau horror films with which they had a lot of success and, as the title suggests, the five stories found within (not including the framing story, I would guess) are adaptations from various 1950s EC comics, repeating the formula from their Tales From The Crypt movie (reviewed here). Despite the title and what it claims on the opening credits, which play out mostly over shots of London, none of the stories in the film are actually taken from the original The Vault Of Horror comic... instead, the segment entitled The Neat Job is taken from an issue of Shock Suspense Stories while the others are versions of stories first published in the pages of Tales From The Crypt. 

The film starts off with an elevator picking up various of the five main characters, played by Michael Craig, Curd Jürgens, Terry Thomas, Daniel Massey and Tom Baker. They are all going down but, down way further than any of them expect, as the elevator deposits them all in an underground chamber. They can’t get the elevator to take them back and so, for the rest of the film, they exchange stories about various nightmares which have been bothering them, allowing the audience access into the five segments which make up the majority of the film’s running time. 

Now, I’ve actually read four of these stories but only remember three of them in terms of a little of the details, because I read the entire run of Tales From The Crypt a few years back. So in the first story, I can definitely tell you that the term adaptation is loosely used. Don’t get me wrong, we still have the same story and the final panel of the comic is rendered as the final shot of that story but, yeah, it’s been watered down somewhat.

To explain, the first story is based on the Tales From The Crypt story Midnight Mess. In this, Daniel Massey pays a private detective who goes to find his lost sister, who has been left everything after their father has died. The detective, played by Mike Pratt (Randall, from Randall And Hopkirk Deceased) finds her but is killed by Massey, who then goes to find his sister. He can’t get served in a restaurant because it closes early in the village she is staying in, so he goes to her house and kills her. He then goes back to the restaurant, which now appears to be open. However, when he’s served dishes made from blood and human flesh, he complains and gives himself away. The waiter pulls back the big curtains in the restaurant to reveal a big mirror... casting only his reflection. All of the other diners are vampires, including his sister who also has a drink when the patrons set him up in the bar as a human bar tap, syphoning his blood ‘fresh from the source’ as the still alive Massey has a tap plugged into an open wound on his neck. Incidentally, his sister is played by real life sister Anna Massey. 

The problem with this segment... and why it’s watered down, in my opinion... is that in the original comic book, the lead character was an innocent. He doesn’t kill anyone but he suffers the same fate anyway... with the last panel being much more graphic in its depiction, if memory serves. I get the feeling the writers here turned him into an evil character so that it feels morally right to have him killed in such a grim fashion. Which kinda weakens the story but, there you go, this film pulls its punches a bit, that’s all. 

The next segment, The Neat Job, is the one told by great British comic actor Terry Thomas, where he marries a character played by actress Glynis Johns. This one is actually quite fun and you can tell these two must have really enjoyed working on this. It turns out that, after they are married, the wife finds out her husband is one of those people with a mania for neatness and everything in its proper place... with even his tool room with jars for each different kind of screw thread or length, kitchen cupboards with tick boxes to indicate stock replenishment etc. After a while, her attempts to please her husband culminate in a sequence where she bumbles about and manages to wreck a couple of rooms as she tries to re-tidy them for him when he comes home. On his discovery of the shambles, she deals him a huge hammer blow and we see the comedian with a claw hammer sticking out of the top of his head before he topples. In the final scene of this story, his wife has pulled out all his various body part and internal organs and put them all in correctly labelled, categorised jars. 

The third story is This Trick’ll Kill You and it’s features a stage magician played by Curd Jürgens and his wife played by Dawn Addams. While on holiday in India, looking for magic tricks, he stumbles onto a really good version of the old Indian rope trick but he can’t persuade the young lady performing the trick to sell it to him at any price. So he arranges a private show for his wife in their hotel room and, while the girl is performing the trick, he stabs her dead. He then re-performs the trick and his wife climbs up the rope but, suddenly, she disappears at the top of the rope and a slowly spreading puddle of her blood forms on the ceiling where the rope was leading too. The rope then gets out of control and has its revenge on Jürgens. 

The fourth story, Bargain In Death, is the worst of the five and features Michael Craig in a dire and slight tale of a man who slows his heart to fake death so he and his friend can split the insurance money... and then expects his friend to dig him up but, obviously, that part doesn’t happen. He does get dug up though, by a gravedigger played by Arthur Mullard at the request of two young medical student friends who need the body. In a curious piece of what would now be called stunt casting, the two med students are played by Robin Nedwell and Geoffrey Davies, who were known as the ‘comedy doctor’ duo in the long running British TV sitcom Doctor In The House. The other nice part of this is when one of the characters is seen reading the novelisation of the Amicus Tales From The Crypt movie.

The fifth story, Drawn And Quartered, stars Tom Baker as a British artist living in Haiti. When an old friend stumbles on him, he finds out that his old agent who had deemed his paintings worthless and bought them for a song, has colluded with an art critic and buyer and his paintings are now fetching high prices in London. So he goes to a voodoo man who gives his painting hand magical powers and he returns to London to take his revenge. Anything he paints and then erases or destroys gets erased or destroyed in a similar fashion and so he paints the three and causes them pain and death by taking their hands or eyes or, in the case of his agent, played by Denholm Elliot, gets him to shoot himself due to drawing a red dot on the forehead of the painting. However, he shouldn’t have left his own self portrait out in the open after he found leaving it in his safe was depriving him of oxygen after a while! Any kind of accident could happen to it. 

And that’s the five stories and then, of course, the elevator doors open to a graveyard and it turns out the men are all dead and forced to tell the same stories to each other for eternity. However, unlike the comics, the Vault Keeper who used to present the tales didn’t make it into the movie.

But it is an entertaining movie and it’s easily one of my favourites in the Amicus portmanteau horror series, falling just behind Dr. Terror’s House Of Horrors (reviewed by me here). Roy Ward Baker’s direction is assured and, once again, he uses some interesting camera movements... like that trick he does where he will zoom into something at the end of a camera pan to change the focus of the frame. Douglas Gamley’s score is also pretty good and he seems to use the Dies Irae musical motif a lot throughout the movie (darn, I wish there was a soundtrack CD to this one... or to any of Gamley’s music, to be honest). 

And, yeah, not much else to add to this. The Vault Of Horror, despite being the only one of the Amicus horror portmanteaus that didn’t star Peter Cushing, is a really entertaining little film and one I would happily watch a number of times. Something about the print or transfer on this seemed a little dodgy, I thought but, it’s still pretty watchable and I’m sure the Blu Ray authors have done the best they can with the materials. Definitely worth a look sometime if you are into this period of British horror movies, for sure.

Zoinks! The Spooky Folklore Behind Scooby Doo

 

Scooby Diving

Zoinks! The Spooky 
Folklore Behind Scooby Doo
By Mark Norman
Chin Beard Books and Oak Tree Books
ISBN 9781837916702

Well this was a pretty fantastic Birthday present for me this year, it has to be said. I originally saw it on BlueSky when one of the people I follow, Raskolnik highlighted it in a post and, it turns out Zoinks! The Spooky Folklore Behind Scooby Doo, pretty much does what it says on the tin, written by a leading UK folklore scholar who I will need to look into at some point in the future, for sure. 

The book is split into seven chapters, bookended by an intro and outro from figures behind the scenes of various of the many variants of the show through the years, not to mention a large appendix of episode guide style lists too. Right away from the start, I was hooked in by the author with Chapter One, Colleges and Cannabis - Scooby Doo Legends In The Real World. 

And this one is a little different from most of the other chapters in the book, in that it investigates the myths created by the show itself and its influence on the world around it... before diving into the other chapters which live up, in no uncertain terms, to the title of the book. This chapter was extremely illuminating for this particular reader, as I haven’t seen many iterations of the show over the years, it has to be said. For example I discovered that, while Scooby-Doo is written... well,  as I just wrote it... in the majority of TV and film properties of the brand, the original first two seasons from the 1960s and 70s correctly write it as Scooby Doo. This is because Doo is actually Scooby’s family name, with Scooby itself being a shortening of his real name, one Scoobert Doo.

Also, although she’s had occasional relationships with men in the series, it would seem that Velma is actually written as a lesbian. And did you know that the term ‘jinkies’ comes from a historical and less blasphemous version of ‘By Jove’? And, furthermore, ‘Zoinks!’ might well have derived from ‘gadzooks’, or rather ‘God’s hooks’. The writer also discusses how much of the folklore of various areas and times was either fuelled by... and in some instances completely created from thin air... various smugglers over the years, in order to keep upstanding citizens, or possibly just some ‘meddling kids’, away from their areas of operation, by scaring people off with the imagery and ‘cosplay’ of said myth. 
 
Chapter Two, Landscape And The Gothic looks at the visual tropes of the ‘state of being gothic’ such as run down crumbling architecture and the appearance of the full moon. Indeed, it even shows how a crescent moon on the show set in one night will suddenly become a full moon for events taking place on the next night, purely to fulfil that gothic vision and tone of the show, flying in the face of continuity. 

Chapter Three, Gh-gh-gh-gh-gh-ghosts is an interesting chapter also, with many stereotypes of ghosts from various literary wells explained, especially as to how they are visually depicted. For instance, in the mid fifteenth to eighteenth century, it was common for the recently deceased to be wrapped in a winding cloth or shroud and be placed in the ground wrapped in that... because only the wealthy could afford such luxury items as a coffin. Hence the depiction of ghosts as being seen as sheet wearing spirits. Reports of a ghost in Hammersmith in 1803 further fuelled this depiction. Also covered in this chapter... which I won’t go into too much here... are the origins of the visual variant of some ghosts being depicted bound in chains and also the variant of an empty, animated suit of armour. As well as such phenomena as mirror ghosts, curses, Crystallomancy, seances, psychics, spirit boards, Knockers in mines and Civil War ghosts.

Chapter Four, Snips and Snails, Witches in Scooby Doo, looks at such things as Tasseomancy and the derivation of the term hag coming from ‘Hægtesse’, which means witch in Middle English. While Chapter Five, Indigenous, Ancient and Non-Western Cultures looks at cryptids such as the abominable snowman, big foot, Japanese dragons, Chinese dragons, Jinn and even at places like Shangri La or communities such as the Mayan and Aztec Civilisations.

Chapter Six, Urban Legends and Folklore Motifs looks at exactly that, with such star performers as Spring Heeled Jack from Victorian times. It also accredits Richard Dorson as the person who first came up with the term ‘urban legend’ in 1968. Very interestingly, it looks at how familiar and reinvented modern legends are, in fact, not modern inventions at all but ones which have echoed down through history over the years. So the myth of alligators living and growing in the sewers saw its predecessor in Roman times, where it was believed that there were octopuses living in the sewers. 

The seventh and final chapter, Thoroughly Modern Scooby gets very up to date with stuff such as the recent rise of the fear of clowns and the, perhaps not so modern, alien abduction phenomenon. Not to mention entering the somewhat dodgy realms of AI. 

And it’s an absolute joy to read, rendered in an entertaining writing style with lots of fun, informative facts. My one criticism would be in reference to the Scooby Snack. While noting that capsules made from psychedelic mushroom psilocybe cubensis are nick-named Scooby Snacks in the real life drug community, after the show, the writer informs us that said treat was not in the show until the 1980s... a relatively modern phenomena. However, this didn’t quite ring true to me and it glitched in my brain... so I went back to my CD recording of the original theme song from 1969 and found the Scooby Snack is definitely mentioned in the lyrics. Perhaps in a more general sense of a plethora of snacks in the show but, nonetheless, it’s right there. 

But it’s a minor criticism and, all in all, I’d have to say I was completely blown away by Zoinks! The Spooky Folklore Behind Scooby Doo and it’s a hard recommend for me. I might have to track down the original show I remember growing up with in the early seventies as repeats on the BBC if I can find a decent Blu Ray at some point. Although I have bad memories of canned laughter plaguing the show too. But, however that pans out, this is a truly excellent book by a very entertaining writer and shouldn’t be missed, if this is the kind of thing you are interested in. 

Charlies Angels - Full Throttle (unrated)

Fallen Angel

Charlies Angels 
Full Throttle (unrated)
USA 2003 Directed by McG
Columbia Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Angelic spoilers unleashed.

Okay, I’ve revisited Charlie’s Angels Full Throttle again and, I have to say, I was disappointed that the Blu Ray and various home video releases available in the UK are still the original, cut down and censored theatrical cut of the movie. Well, I wasn’t having any of that so I upgraded from my DVD of the old unrated US edition of the movie to a new US Blu Ray edition of the same, so I could once again watch the slightly sexier version of the movie, including extra blood splashes gushing out of the mouths of the Angels when they are hit in the face (which may not seem like much to some but, hey, I won’t abide censorship). So I’m now finding out that the UK is the only country which doesn’t have the uncut version released in some format so, yeah, if you want to watch this movie properly, make sure you import the unrated edition over from the states (and make sure your player can play the correct zone/region into which it’s been encoded over there) . 

Now, I’m still not sure why this brilliant movie failed at the box office when the first one was so loved by audiences. I remember taking the day off work so I could see this in its first day in cinemas (in the theatrical version, naturally) and I absolutely loved it and assumed it would be a big hit again. I mean, everything seems a tad more than the first film and, well, what’s wrong with that? Clearly, not everyone agreed with me. 

This one starts, just like the first film, with a pre-credits, end of mission action sequence zooming in from the Columbia lady logo, featuring the three angels played by Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu and Cameron Diaz but, unlike the first film, it directly relates to the plot of the rest of the movie. Following both that and a second parody of the old TV series opening credits, we go straight to a scene where Bruce Willis, in a cameo, is shot by a masked assailant... who later turns out to be his already ex-wife Demi Moore playing an ex-Angel... who is the brains behind the whole criminal operation. Add in more fun with an evil ex-boyfriend of Barrymore’s character and absolutely heaps of action and we get what, to me, seemed then and does now, like a rollicking good, highly entertaining, female-centric action movie.

And, like I said, everything seems a little more. The idea of using completely different colour palettes for each scene seems, somehow, much more blatant, for example... the pre-credits scene where Bruce Willis gets killed is lit entirely in blue (or possibly with a blue filter over everything) and a scene later, which is a parody of an episode of CSI, is lit entirely in red like an old photographer’s developing room. And another scene where the lighting is so stylised is in a parody of the prison release scene from the remake of Cape Fear. And, as I’m describing this, you can already see that there are absolutely loads of pop culture references scattered about the movie. 

For instance, the CSI parody scene uses the old The Who song, Who Are You? which I believe was used as the theme tune to one of the variants of CSI and, I believe I’m right in saying Cameron Diaz is made up to look like one of the male stars of that show in this scene? And Bernard Herrmann’s famous Cape Fear theme is also used in a few places in the movie, to push the obsessive nature of Barrymore’s ex-boyfriend’s obsession with killing her in revenge for his long imprisonment. 

Among other such confections, some of the more interesting references include a reunion at Rydell High School (although, sadly, none of the stars of the Grease films turn up for this) and at least two references to Singin’ In The Rain, one with the Good Morning couch gag at the end of the M C Hammer dance number near the start of the movie and the other is, for people who know the 1952 musical well, a parody of the “Zelda! Oh, Zelda!” moment at the film premiere scene at Hollywood. 

There are also quite a few cameo appearances by a whole host of people including Pink (who is in scene while one of her songs written for the movie is played in the background), Carrie Fisher as the Mother Superior where a back story origin of the popular villain from the first movie, the ‘creepy, thin man’ played again by Crispin Glover, takes place (the Playboy Mansion stands in as the building used for the convent here) and John Cleese as Lucy Liu’s father. Of course, one nice apparition of a cameo is actress Jaclyn Smith, reprising her role as original TV Angel Kelly Garrett, to offer a bit of advice to Drew Barrymore when she’s in trouble. 

And speaking of returning Angels, I can’t find any mention of it now but my understanding is, one was asked to return and definitely didn’t. I remember reading at the time that Kate Jackson was asked to reprise her original TV role as Sabrina Duncan, as the rogue angel gone bad... but she didn’t want to show her old character in a bad light... so the name was changed and Demi Moore (who to be fair, does look a little like her in this movie), took the role instead. Again, I don’t have any evidence now that this was the case but I certainly remember reading this back in 2003 at some point. 

Whatever the case, catching up with this now, I’m amazed that this one did so poorly at the box office. I was waiting for another sequel for a while before I realised this one must have bombed... it’s a great shame because McG directed two absolutely stunning Charlies Angel’s films and, frankly, Full Throttle certainly doesn’t let the first movie down in any way. I loved it then and I love it now. This one will always be on my top tier Hollywood action movie recommend list, along with the first. Don’t turn your back on this one, it’s fantastic. 

OSS117 - Mission To Tokyo

Tokyo Selves To Death

OSS117 - Mission To Tokyo
aka Atout coeur à Tokyo 
pour OSS 117
aka Terror In Tokyo
aka From Tokyo With Love
France/Italy 1966
Directed by Michel Boisrond
Gaumont/Kino Lorber Blu Ray Zone A

The fourth feature in Kino Lorber’s Blu Ray set of the five 1960s incarnations of OSS117 is OSS117 - Mission To Tokyo and, I was kind of holding out hope that this one would be a lot better than it’s predecessors, being as it’s not directed by André Hunebelle this time around... just ‘presented by’ him. Instead it’s directed by Michel Boisrond and, to further whet my appetite for the movie, instead of being based completely on a Jean Bruce novel, it’s instead ‘adapted by’ two people (and apparently the adaptation is pretty much a completely new story, such as often happened with the James Bond films this series was trying to compete with, up to a certain point), one of whom is Terence Young, who of course directed Dr. No (reviewed here) and helped groom Sean Connery to bring a definitive image of Bond to the screen. And I was similarly impressed that it’s set in Japan with many of the kinds of cultural elements utilised in You Only Live Twice (reviewed here) all present and correct here... a good year before the Bond film was even released. I guess the producers must have got wind that the next Bond would be set in Japan. 

But yes, even with all these good things going for it, this one is still quite a dull and disappointing affair and, perhaps better than the previous one but maybe not as good as the Kerwin Matthews films. Once again Frederick Stafford takes on the role of Hubert Bonnisseur de la Bath, aka OSS117, for his second and final time and, he’s not completely unlikable but, once again, I have to note that Matthews was a much more animated personality than this guy... which is really saying something. Although in fairness, Stafford does look a lot more like the typical movie spy of the time. 

The plot involves the world being blackmailed by a secret organisation who are using miniature planes to launch nuclear missiles at secret US government intelligence headquarters around the world unless, of course, they are paid huge sums of money. So OSS117 is sent to Tokyo for no earthly reason that I could fathom. I can only assume the Japanese were widely admired for their miniaturisation techniques and leave it at that. There’s a turncoat gal, played by Marina Vlady, who provides the story twists when she’s revealed to be helping the bad guys before turning coat again and working with Hubert. Plus there’s a second OSS117 girl in the form of a Japanese secret service sergeant played by Jitsuko Yoshimura, who you may remember as the younger of the two female protagonists/antagonists of Onibaba. There are the usual twists and turns plus the odd fist fight or car chase (although the opening action pre-credits sequence is nowhere near the quality of the Bond pictures) and it’s pretty much business as usual as far as this film series goes. 

One interesting bit of business, which heavily foreshadows You Only Live Twice, is a rival faction of thugs who you assume are out to get Hubert in the opening half an hour or so of the movie (but, yeah, not really... you’ll see it coming as soon as this bunch are first introduced) but who turn out to be the Japanese secret service, who then team up to help OSS117 fulfil his mission. 

And, there are a few nice shot set ups too. One such occurs when a character is in long shot and walking back towards his car from the right of the screen to the left. The camera starts moving sideways until a decorative architectural detail of an upright post with an elabourate carving, hollow and leaving a big hole in the middle of it, hits the centre of the screen and the car has shifted with the camera viewpoint until it’s directly lined up in the centre of the opening of that upright. Then the character continues walking to the centre of the shot and gets in his car in the small opening in the centre of the screen. Which is a nice way of doing things. There also a huge amount of effort to get the look right, such as a shot which reminded me of something of the deliberately controlled lighting in a specific sequence in Dario Argento’s Suspiria (reviewed here). As a shady figure in a raincoat at the end of the corridor, his face under shadows like a film noir, lights his cigarette, it lights up his face just a little too much when the lighter is engaged, making it evident that a light source hidden from view has been switched on at the same time to complete the effect, before being switched off again when the lighter is flicked closed. 

All in all, it’s not a terrible film but, accompanied once again by Michel Magne’s rather tepid score... which is fine as a stand alone listen but certainly doesn’t really seem to elevate the on screen action and pacing of the film... it’s all just a little dull and struggles to engage the viewer, at least this audience member, it has to be said. 

So that’s me done with OSS117 - Mission To Tokyo. Some may find it more yawn inducing than thrilling, I suspect. For the last film in the set we have American actor John Gavin taking over the role but we also have André Hunebelle back in the driving seat so, yeah, I’m maybe not looking forward to it as much as I’d hoped, to be honest. I’ll report back here with a review when I can. 

The Land Unknown

Rotor Blade Runner

The Land Unknown
USA 1957
Directed by Virgil W. Vogel
Universal/101 Films 
Blu Ray Zone B/DVD Region 2 Dual Edition

Well, I’ve somehow never encountered this 1950s B-movie before now and, luckily, one of the semi-regular 101 Films online sales meant I could pick the thing up cheaply and finally see it. I’m not sure why I never caught The Land Unknown on television as a kid but, catching up to it now, it’s possible that it just wasn’t that well thought of enough even to schedule it on a Sunday afternoon on the BBC (or maybe I just managed to miss it). Either way, I’ve seen it now and I’m here to tell you that this movie is actually fairly awful, not all that entertaining but, I dunno, is something of a comforting watch (I’d watch this again, even though it didn’t do much for me, it has to be said).

Anyway, this film was apparently inspired by real life events when, in 1947, warm water was discovered in Antarctica. All this is used in a very long briefing by a Navy chief to his crew who, ten years later, are going out there with thier ships, seaplanes and helicopters, to explore various sections of the South Pole to try and figure out why there are warm waters in certain areas. This opening section is, in all honesty, interminably dull and it’s only livened up when Commander Alan Roberts (played by none other than Jock ‘Tarzan’ Mahoney) and his sidekick  Lt. Jack Carmen (played by William Reynolds) are introduced to the female reporter for the Oceanic Press, Margaret Hathaway (played by Shirley Patterson) and she utters the only memorable line in the movie, “I always love to meet men, Captain”.

At any rate, two months later, Alan, Jack, Margaret and Steve Miller (played by Phil Harvey... no, not that Steve Miller) find themselves at the Antarctic and in a helicopter flying over said warm water. Alas, a storm comes along and, as they’re trying to get back to their base ship, a Pterodactyl gives them a swipe with it’s wing, damaging an essential part of their ‘copter and forcing them to crash land in a volcanic valley. Here they encounter dangerous grab-you-while-you’re-not-looking vegetation, two giant lizards, a Tyrannosaurus Rex, a Plesiosaur and, no less a villain for most of the movie until he kinda redeems himself at the end, the hostile survivor of an exploration team from ten years prior... Hunter, played by none other than Henry Brandon. You may remember Brandon in some famous roles such as the titular doctor in the 1940 serial Drums Of Fu Manchu, as Scar in The Searchers and  even an appearance as a tough, old timer cop in John Carpenter’s Assault On Precinct 13. 

Now there are two big problems with the film but, in its favour is that it mostly looks nice. It was originally supposed to be a full colour A-picture but, when Universal slashed the budget and went for a black and white B-picture instead, famed director Jack Arnold jumped ship and Virgil W. Vogel, director of The Mole People (reviewed here) took over. But lets get back to those two problems...

One problem is the tone of the special effects... in some ways they’re pretty good in that, asides from the old chestnut of having two real lizards fighting, standing in for dinosaurs, the various actual ‘man-in-suit’ dinosaur creations in the film are dropped in quite credibly against both the real live action and also the various miniatures, with rarely a matt line or juddery mismatch to be seen (an illusion which even survives the beautiful Blu Ray transfer of the film, put out here by 101 Films). Sadly, the majority of the actual dinosaurs spliced in like this are far from credible in and of themselves. I mean, the Plesiosaur is fairly easy on the eye but that T-Rex (the head apparently later re-used as the dino under the stairs in the original TV series The Munsters) looks quite ridiculous and, no matter how cleverly it’s interpolated into the surrounding footage, it really doesn’t save it.

The other big problem with the movie are the practicalities. We have a big, hulking Tyrannosaurus Rex who has to back off because his seemingly tough skin is sliced apart by the rotors of the grounded helicopter (the rotor blades completely unscathed by the encounter). I mean, really? Also, although our heroes... such as they are and they’re, refreshingly for the time, ‘shades of grey’, almost anti-heroes... spend almost 25 days in the prehistoric valley (such as it is), they stay clean shaven. How and why have they got, in their unlikely helicopter full of provisions, a bunch of razor blades from somewhere? Certainly, this issue isn’t addressed in the film at all and just ignored, as our less than facially rugged protagonists explore their new domain. 

And finally, how does long term survivor Henry Brandon know that blowing in a specific shell frightens away dinosaurs? I mean, how do you find this stuff out in the first place? In this hostile environment where you’re trying to be as quiet as possible so as not to become dino food, did he just decide to blow into one within the vicinity of a giant beast for fun one day? None of these questions are addressed, let alone explained, in the course of the adventures.

And there you have it. I really don’t have much good to say about The Land Unknown. I kinda half enjoyed it and I found it comforting to switch the brain off and do nothing... which is how I suspect people who watch football (for whatever reason or motivation those bizarre people behave like that) feel when they are watching their team pit their leg woggling skills against an enemy team, maybe. So, yeah, I can’t recommend this one, in all honesty and, I can’t even say it’s not a complete dud... but I did personally get some entertainment value out of it and, as I said, I would watch this one again. I guess you’ll probably need to go with your gut on this one. 

Death In Paradise

Paradise Lost

Death In Paradise
USA 2006 Directed by Robert Harmon 
Sony Pictures TV Blu Ray Zone 1

Warning: Some big spoilerage.

The third of the Jesse Stone TV movies, based on Robert B. Parker’s crime novels, is Death In Paradise. Once again we join the chief of police in Paradise, Massachusets as played, very thoughtfully and introvertedly, by Tom Selleck (an actor I’ve always liked but barely seen because he doesn’t usually star in the films I would want to see... it’s only because my dad loves these Jesse Stone films that I’m discovering them now*). 

This one seems to have a lot going on in it and starts off with the discovery of a corpse in water... which has only been there about three weeks but, that’s enough to make identification hard (it almost looks like a mummy). It turns out it’s the body of a thirteen year old girl and Jesse and his department have to find out who murdered her... although it takes a while to identify just who she is, at first. 

Meanwhile, there’s another sub plot involving a woman who is regularly abused by her husband whenever he drinks, in a domestic violence case. This one actually did not end up where I thought it would but, yeah, there are consequences to the team of regulars in the pursuit of this one. 

And talking about sub plots... two more things Jesse has to deal with is a) dating a local doctor from a college and b) trying to give up drinking by seeing a psychiatrist. I’m guessing the drinking stuff will take a few movies to sort out (and then I’m guessing a backslide for Jesse too) and, I don’t know if the woman he’s dating hangs over into anymore of the movies either... time will tell I guess. 

Here’s a thing though... of the two main cases which Jesse is dealing with in this story, the murder and the domestic violence... both trails end in death. In fact, Jesse either kills or gives rise to a kill in self defence, three people when all is said and done. So, yeah, although I enjoy Selleck playing the monosyllabic, often silent type of person, he does have his moments where he becomes a man of action, so to speak. I’m not sure that’s a good spin for the character and I’ll have to keep an eye on his body count in future, I think. 

Two more quick things. 

In a couple of flashback sequences, as Stone is trying to figure out how the girl got to be at the bottom of a lake, weighted down, we see some shots of her under water a little like the lady in the water in the second of Frank Sinatra’s Tony Rome films, Lady In Cement (without the nudity). And then, later in the episode, a ghostly vision of her appears to Jesse in his office, saying what Molly will say when she enters a few seconds later, to highlight to Stone that it’s an important clue and that he should follow it up. So this is interesting stuff here and I’m wondering if he’ll have any other ghostly visions as the film series continues. 

Once again, Selleck is surrounded by good actors including regulars (so far) Viola Davis as Molly Crane and Kohl Sudduth as Suitcase... both who work under him. Here’s another thing though... and this is the big spoiler here folks... I said one of the things Stone is working on has consequences later down the line. When the wife beater fires a shot off in the local supermarket, Stone is forced to shoot him dead (he fires twice in the end because the first shot doesn’t incapacitate the perpetrator) but shortly afterwards he discovers that the shot that went wild from the guy has hit Suit in the head. So for the rest of the episode, Suit is in a coma in a hospital bed and Jesse and Molly take turns to read to him, to try and spark some kind of response. And, as the story concludes, Jesse is still reading to the unconscious Suit before the credits roll. So I’m kind of on tenterhooks now to see if the character survives to come back for the next film in the series or not. I’m kind of hoping he will but, obviously, with him in a coma, they could string this one out for quite some time. 

I guess I’ll know soon enough because, that’s me done on the third of the Jesse Stone movies, Death In Paradise. I’m liking these a lot more than I thought I would and am looking forward to watching the next one soon. 

* I wrote this review about a year before he recently passed away.

28 Years Later - The Bone Temple

Savile Row

28 Years Later - 
The Bone Temple
Directed by Nia DaCosta
UK/USA 2025
Columbia
UK Cinema Release Print

Warning: 28 Spoilers Later...

Okay, so 28 Years Later - The Bone Temple, is the fourth in what I shall call the ‘28 Units Of Man Made Measures Of Duration’ franchise and the second of the trilogy which is a sequel to the first two films. It’s also a very direct sequel to 28 Years Later (reviewed here) and, as much as I loved Nia DaCosta’s The Marvels (reviewed here), I’d have to say I really didn’t love this fourth film at all. This one has two story elements which, inevitably, meet up in the final act. 

So we have the somewhat overly long continuation of Spike (played by Alfie Williams), who finds himself reluctantly joining the team of satanists who base their look on Jimmy Saville, lead by Sir Jimmy Crystal (played by Jack O'Connell) and we have the other story element... Ralph Fiennes playing the doctor who befriended Spike in the first movie, this time actually having somewhat of an epiphany and actually coming up with a cure for the RAGE infested zombie-like creatures, in the shape of “I’ll be your Bub for this movie” Samson (played by Chi Lewis-Parry)... which is the only part of the story I was truly invested in, truth be told.

Basically, the whole movie plays out like some kind of home invasion movie, one of my least favourite genres of cinema, as the Jimmys do really nasty, brutal things to innocent folk... somewhat hammering home the obvious message that, while the RAGE zombies are a credible threat, they’re not really evil like that observed when humanity is given free reign. No surprise that the Jimmys are the villains of the movie. 

Um... yeah, I don’t have much good to say about this installment, to be honest... apart from Fiennes amazing performance of an

Iron Maiden number towards the end of the film (which is not a group I know but he put on a good show), it just didn’t hit right with me and felt somewhat out of place under the franchise umbrella, I thought, 

A criticism is that they never mention Jimmy Saville by name, invoking the name Jimmy Crystal instead for whatever reason but, it has to be said, with the look and the mannerisms... and constant cries of “Owzat!”... any audience member born in the UK of a certain age will have absolutely no doubt in their minds who this ‘cult of Jimmy’ is based on. There are also more Teletubby references, for those who dig such things. 

The end of the movie sets up the third (fifth) part by having the return of a character (and a taxi... and a nice signature nedle drop) from the very first movie, 28 Days Later, which will please fans of that movie and which promises some kind of connection to the films outside of the RAGE monsters themselves. 

But, yeah, somewhat of a shorter review than that of the last movie and I apologise but, I just didn’t find this one very interesting. Not completely dull but somehow less creative than the other films in the franchise, I thought. Although that epilogue and the final fate of the Jimmys as seen in this one does seem to set up the idea that... well... there must be other interesting things to say about the whole scenario after this one. 28 Years Later - The Bone Temple isn’t a complete dud but, yeah, it’s definitely the worst of the films so far and I’m fine to wait however many years it is until the next part of the franchise, for sure. 

Annual Cryptic Movie Quiz 2025 Answers

Quizwoz Answers

Okay everybody. Thanks for all who took part in my Annual Cryptic Movie Quiz for the end of 2025. This year’s winners are returning winners from last year with full marks... Chris and Ross from Manchester. Well done lads.

For all you who want to know which ones you got wrong (or indeed right), here are the puntastic and cryptic answers for you all.

1. Egyptian corpse owns technical equipment. 
An Egyptian corpse would be a mummy. If a person owns technical equipment then he/she “has tech”, so aztec. So we get the first film in The Aztec Mummy Trilogy.

2. What you give people for Christmas.
Well, presents so... yeah... Presence.

3. A central stage for spherical objects used in sports.
A spherical object used in a sport could be a ball. A central stage used in sports could be an arena. So we get John Wick spin off Ballerina.

4. The pride of lions’ fierce vocals are just over 19 decibels.
Lions fierce vocal sounds are a roar. One decibel over 19 decibels would be 20 so... The Roaring Twenties.

5. Suffering a disease in which a high temperature is a prominent symptom, on an evening at the weekend.
A disease could be a fever. An evening at the weekend could be a Saturday night. So... Saturday Night Fever.

6. A non X-rated firebird was polished up for the plan.
A firebird could be a phoenix but, non x-rated means you have to take away the x, which leaves phoeni. If you polished something up then it shone. Another term for a plan could be a scheme. So, phoeni-shone scheme... Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme.

7. Burglar belonging to the father of a kind of sack.
A sack could be a bag. The father could be a dad. The burglar is a thief. So we have, The Thief Of Bagdad.

8. A choice between two indefinite articles.
Two indefinite articles are an and a. A choice implies one or another... so an or a, or rather Oscar winning Anora.

9. A dagger of frozen water.
Frozen water is ice. A dagger is a knife. So we have one of have Carrol Baker’s Italian gialli, A Knife Of Ice.

10. A musical composition made out of soup.
Simply unscramble the letters of soup to get a type of musical composition, so O P U S. Recent John Malkovich thriller Opus.

11. The incorrect leg wear.
Trousers but they’re wrong. It’s the second Wallace And Gromit short film The Wrong Trousers.

12. The specific nomenclature of a prickly stemmed flower.
Nomenclature denotes a name. The prickly stemmed flower is a rose. So Sean Connery does Umberto Eco thriller The Name Of The Rose.

13. Bond villain’s tool for accessing his front door.
The Bond villain I was thinking of was Largo (played by Adolfo Celli in Thunderball and Klaus Maria Brandauer in Never Say Never Again). To access his front door he would surely need a front door key. So the Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson movie Key Largo.

14. Equine’s wing plumage.
Equine implies horse. Plumage is traditionally feathers. So we have the classic Marx Brothers movie Horse Feathers.

And that’s it for 2025’s end of year quiz. As always, I hope it gave some of you something to keep you occupied in any Christmas downtime and that you enjoyed having a crack at it. Let me know if you want me to keep coming up with these end of year quizzes. Feedback is always welcome. 

The Complete Adventures of Señorita Scorpion Volume 2

Sting In The Tale

The Complete Adventures 
of Señorita Scorpion Volume 2
by Lee Savage Jr and Emmett McDowell
Altus Press
ISBN 9781618270702

Following on from the first volume (reviewed by me here), The Complete Adventures of Señorita Scorpion Volume 2 is the concluding collection of stories originally appearing in issues of the pulp magazine Action Stories between 1945 and 1949. And, having read the first volume, I’d have to say that these particular stories are not what I was expecting. 

Following an introduction by modern pulp writer Will Murray (one of the modern writers of Doc Savage who actually gets the formula right), we plummet straight into the first of the four stories collected here, Brand Of The Gallows-Ghost, from the Winter 1945 issue. 

This one, like many of the Señorita Scorpion stories, doesn’t feature the Scorpion, aka Elgera Douglas, herself in all that many sequences. She pops up here and there while other characters, like her romantic interest Chisos Owens, shouldering the majority of the action and deduction of the tale. The secret ingredient being that, as usual, everybody is talking about Elgera and she’s the focus point for the solution to the story. This yarn is pretty good and, once again, Lee Savage Jr uses his expressive language to craft a quite literary pulp, with wonderful passages like... “The moonlight dropped hesitant yellow fingers into the mysterious depths of Santa Helena Canyon…”. 

It’s all the standard Western tinted blood and thunder you could want... with a curious character name popping up. One of the female characters in the book is called Lupita Tovar and, I can only assume this is in homage to the 1920s-1950s Mexican actress of the same name, who my regular readers might remember best as being in the Spanish version of the 1931 Dracula, made on the same sets as the Lugosi Dracula (both reviewed here) during the evenings of the same shoot. 

The second story, Lash Of The Six Gun Queen, from the Winter 1947 edition of Action Stories, is where things get and, frankly, stay a little weird concerning the stories in this volume. This one is probably the stand out story in this collection but, unusually, it’s told in the first person from the point of view of a new character trying to bring Señorita Scorpion to justice (before falling for her and finding her innocent of her supposed crimes in the third act) rather than the standard third person. A good tale, though, nonetheless.

Then things get even weirder with the Winter 1948 tale Gun-Witch of Hoodoo Range, written this time by Emmett McDowell instead of regular writer Lee Savage Jr... and that change of writer shows in more than just the style, which is less expressive and poetic than Savage Jr’s prose (although it certainly has its moments too). However, the character of the Scorpion does not seem to be remotely like she was in the other books, always going around masked to hide a scar which she never previously had and with absolutely nobody referring to Elgera Douglas, nor indeed Chisos Owens, who is absent from both this story and, surprisingly, the next. In fact, the Scorpion in this is revealed to be a new love interest for a new character, who is the focal point of this one (none of the regular characters are in this at all) and, it’s revealed at the end that she duped everyone and that the real Señorita Scorpion died of wounds received half way through the tale. Wait... what?

This is a twist which is completely ignored when Lee Savage Jr returns to write the final tale, from Winter 1949, The Sting Of The Scorpion. This one has no mention of the events in the previous tale (as that one did of no events prior) and we definitely are back in the saddle with Elgera Douglas as the original Scorpion once more. 

That being said, this one differs from the others in that, a) there’s no Chisos Owens turning up or even mentioned here and b) this one stays with the Scorpion and she’s the main attraction of every story element, as we follow her adventure while she tries to prove her innocence, find out why she is being framed and identify who is doing it. It’s a pretty good tale but with no warning that it was intended to be the last. Actually, the main takeaway I got from the last two stories in this volume, both by different writers, is that a scabbard is not something which (unlike what the dictionary says) is just for holding swords. In these last two it’s referred to as the long holster on a horse which holds the rifles for the rider. So that was an interesting discovery... I need to do more research into that, I think. 

And there you have it. The Complete Adventures of Señorita Scorpion Volume 2 is very much a different experience to the first volume but, this makes it no less entertaining and I certainly had a good time with it. It’s a shame Lee Savage Jr never returned to the character but I understand there’s a newish, overpriced, short volume of three modern tales by different writers which I may have to look into at some point in the near future... so there’s that to look forward to.

February/The Blackcoat's Daughter

Half Term

February/
The Blackcoat's Daughter
Canada 2015
Directed by Oz Perkins
A24 Films

Okay, so February (aka The Blackcoat’s Daughter) is going to be a tricky film to talk about because there’s something about the movie which will dawn on a fair percentage of the audience maybe 20 minutes into the movie, when a third character is introduced... but I’m still going to try and shuffle around this element and attempt to not reveal anything, even though, as I implied, many people will reach a conclusion about a certain aspect of the movie fairly early on. 

Okay, so the basic set up is we have three girls who the narrative follows. The film is set in February, in what must be half term week. Two thirds of the action of the film takes place in a remote, snow surrounded, boarding school where two girls in their late teens, Katherine and Rose played by Kiernan Shipka and Lucy Boynton are left behind, when all the other girls are picked up by their parents for the holiday. So they have to stay there for a day or two with two, un-costumed nuns who work there while they are waiting for their parents to show up. However, something is happening in the school and there are rumours of satanic worship. Meanwhile, the third woman, Joan, played by Emma Roberts, has escaped from somewhere but a kindly gentleman and his wife pick her up and offer to drive her to where she’s going. 

And that’s really all I’m going to say about the plot because... well, because it’s actually a very simple story but the way the story is structured is fragmented and elliptical. This does two things... one, it makes the story more interesting to discover, simple as it is and two, it stops a certain trick of the story being detected by the audience until... well like I said... twenty minutes or so into it. 

The film is written and directed by Oz Perkins, who is the son of actor Anthony Perkins (who has recently, since I saw this and wrote this review, become quite a succesful presence in the modern cinematic landscape). And, it turns out he’s not a bad director. I don’t know if I’d go as far as calling this a horror film because I think a certain element of the plot depends on your point of view. I think it’s similar to Saint Maud (reviewed here) in terms of how the audience perceives or believes certain things, which will affect how you categorise this as either a horror or a thriller. But it does, at least, tend to use some of the tension of the horror film and it does get quite gory towards the end. Certainly, the director knows how to squeeze a large amount of dread from what was probably a small budget, delivering a film which manages to maintain a fairly creepy atmosphere, even in the parts of the movie which are unscored... there’s a scene where Katherine is gazing out of a window with no music but with a smile playing on her face which, once you’ve seen the movie, I think will be something you would remember. 

To accomplish this kind of atmosphere, the director mostly eschews camera movement, I noticed. Sure there’s a little but not much and he seems content to just place the camera in a static position for the most part and let the scenes play out just cutting from one point of view to another. It slows the pacing of the film considerably but, that’s okay, it’s what gives it the edge it has and I have to say it works very well when, really, the story perhaps doesn’t feel like it could hold up if the movie were sped up and, more pertinently, edited in a different manner to the way it’s presented here. 

Although it could be dismissed as a simplistic variant of an exorcist story... and I’d maybe have a hard time defending even that... the way in which the film is structured helps relieve the inherent malaise that many modern movies dipping their toes into that kind of territory seem to generate and, even though this is the director’s first feature, I’d have to say he really knows what he’s doing here.

Another element of the film, the sparsely spotted score by another member of the show business family, Elvis Perkins, is extremely effective when it is called upon to contribute, maintain or even generate the quite palpable tension inherent in a simple scene... like a girl walking slowly down a corridor. Also, the odd non-sequitur images such as one of a shadowy figure in a basement energetically pursuing some kind of ritual are pretty effective and are one of the things which help build the atmosphere where the audience, or at least me, are on the edge of their seat. 

And, for fear of accidentally including spoilers, that’s as much as I’ll say about February/The Blackcoat’s Daughter. Whether it’s a horror film or not is for you to decide but I think it would play well to those of you who enjoy the horror genre. The central element on which a certain part of the movie hinges on was perhaps less effective on me because of the way I clumsily perceive certain things but, yeah, I’d be curious to see what people think of the plot on this one, so I’ll recommend it to a couple of friends and see if they had a common experience. Either way, a well directed movie which is very much worth a look if you’re into movies which build a strong, slow burn atmosphere. Give it a go. 

The Mole People

Mole Keeper

The Mole People
USA 1956
Directed by Virgil W. Vogel
Universal/101 Films
Dual Edition 
Blu Ray Zone B/DVD Region 2

Warning: Yeah, this one has a bit of an ending spoiler.

Okay, so The Mole People is not exactly the best of the Universal atomic age monster movies, for sure but, for all its faults, I still find it a lot more watchable than Tarantula (reviewed here), it has to be said. It is quite a sluggish movie, however and, certainly does nothing to hook the audience from the start. After the familiar Universal logo comes up, we are presented with Dr. Frank C. Baxter appearing as... Dr. Frank C. Baxter, in a bizarre attempt to fool the audience that he’s a real expert on what he’s talking about. And he talks and talks and talks. Audiences are treated to around four and a half minutes of him telling us of various theories put forward over the centuries, using illustrations on a board, consisting of speculation about what lays beneath the Earth’s surface. Frankly, I would imagine he’s already lost half his audience fairly quickly and half of the drive-in customers would have possibly turned around and driven out again. 

For those that stayed, we are then treated to some opening titles which are quite well done, with the various bits of typography rising from the foreground rim of a steaming crater, presumably implying some volcanic activity. Then we join the three main male protagonists of the movie... Dr. Roger Bently (played by the sturdy block of wood that is John Agar), Dr. Jud Bellamin (played by Hugh Beaumont) and Professor Etienne Lafarge (played by the always watchable Nestor Paiva). The three of them, with various colleagues and diggers, are in Mesopotamia trying to find out what happened to the Chero dynasty. As luck would have it, they find a tablet which points to a snowy mountain. They climb it and find the ruins of a Sumerian temple but, one of their number is swallowed by the earth, opening a long shaft beneath the surface of the mountain. They follow their now dead colleague down and discover a race of Sumerian albinos who have been living beneath the Earth for years. How they’re albinos I don’t know... they have black hair and white painted faces which tend to make everyone look like Data from Star Trek The Next Generation. The sumerians also employ a bunch of mole monsters to do the digging for their mushroom food. 

Anyway, the doctors convince the antagonistic Sumerians, by way of their torch (the Sumerian’s are sensitive to strong light) that they are ambassadors to their God, explaining away Nestor Paiva’s death at the hands of a mole monster as him being summoned back to heaven. But the king and especially the high priest are unsure and it’s a race against time as to whether they can find their way back to the surface world before tensions become murderous for them. The high priest is played by none other than Alan Napier who, ten years later, would play the role he is probably best remembered for these days, as Alfred the Butler opposite Adam West’s Bruce Wayne in the Batman TV show. Meanwhile, the female love interest for John Agar appears in the form of Cynthia Patrick as Adad. She is given to Agar as she is different from all the others, not being born an albino. Things get a bit vague here I think.

And, it’s not a bad film but certainly not a pacey one for sure. We have to wait for almost half an hour of the 77 minute running time, for example, before we even catch sight of a mole monster. Now, it has to be said the many mole monster costumes and masks aren’t really anything to write home about in terms of convincing anyone that these are genuine living organisms, as opposed to just various men in monster suits but, it also has to be said, I do like the design of the monsters and they are a bit iconic (enough that they’ve been reproduced as various Universal monster themed action figures over the years). The make up design is credited, as a lot of these movies, to Bud Westmore but, yeah, whether it actually was Westmore who did these or one of his underlings well, I couldn’t tell you. I certainly don’t take it on trust (see Mallory O’Meara’s fantastic book, The Lady From The Black Lagoon, which I reviewed here for more information on the notorious Westmore). 

Actually, the monsters are pretty much everything here, as a lot of the first half an hour is various stock footage from previous films mixed in with close ups of actors dressed similarly, as the three original protagonists climb the mountain etc. Another bit of padding comes along when an ‘albino’ girl does a long and less than sexy slave dance to fill out the time. This film doesn’t really have an awful lot going for it when you put it down on paper but there are a few other things of interest asides from the monsters. 

One is a comment from one of the male heros when they are caught in a snowy avalanche and he remarks that sitting there in the middle of the avalanche is still safer than crossing Times Square. So, wow, Times Square must have had a bit of a reputation even in the 1950s, it would seem. 

Another interesting moment of genuine horror (for those days) is when three slave girls are sacrificed to the ‘Light Of Ishtar’... aka put in a room which lets in the bright sun from an opening above. Being as they are sensitive to light, when the dead bodies of the three girls are brought out of the room, they are burned black and flaky all over and it’s kinda interesting to see this strong an image as they are carted off in a 1950s Universal monster movie, to be honest. Earlier in the film, the director even tries a ‘fake out’ jump scare but, to be honest, it doesn’t really work. He does give it a good go though. 

One last thing of note is that, in the original cut presented to the studio, Bently and Bellamin escape with Bently’s new middle earth girlfriend Adad and, originally Bently and Adad were supposed to go off hand in hand, living happily every after. This doesn’t happen in the final release print however. In a bizarre twist, just as they get back to the ruined temple above ground, there is a small ground tremor and a big column falls on Adad, crushing her to death. Apparently, this reshoot took place at the insistence of the studio because, even though Adad is clearly not an albino and is just a normal looking person, the powers that be didn’t like the idea that this was still promoting an interracial relationship... so they nipped that in the bud by dropping a column on her. 

And there you go, that’s The Mole People. It’s not the film I remembered it being and it’s certainly a bit ploddy but, if you are a fan of these 1950s B-movie monster flicks then you should still have a good time with this one, especially when, in another moment which defies audience expectations, the mole monsters rise up to overthrow their oppressors and help the heroes escape. Yep, did not see that one coming for a while into the plot, it has to be said. So The Mole People does have a lot of interesting moments, for sure. Whether you think they add up to be something more than the sum of their parts though, is up to you.

Not Your China Doll

Queen Wong

Not Your China Doll
The Wild And Shimmering 
Life Of Anna May Wong
By Katie Gee Salisbury
Faber
ISBN 9780571388677

I’ve seen just a few movies with Anna May Wong in them over the years but never really knew much about her. So sometime around a year and a half ago I bought this beautiful looking, new hardback of Not Your China Doll, subtitled The Wild And Shimmering Life Of Anna May Wong by Katie Gee Salisbury. Well, because of the usual book accumulation problem, I only got around to cracking those attractive covers late 2025 but, alas, when I got to around about three quarters of the way through, a long drawn out personal tragedy hit my life, culminating in the passing of my father. As regular readers will know I shut down the blog for just over a month but I also stopped reading this tome at the same time, because I didn’t think a book this well written and illuminating was something I could fully concentrate on after his passing.

But, both the blog and my somewhat eclectic ‘book life’ are both back in action and so, it was time to finish what I started. Which proved to be an absolutely charming book about the Asian-American actress, born in Los Angeles in 1905 under the name Wong Liu Tsong... which apparently, translated from Chinese, means Frosted Yellow Willows.

And, I have to say, this book was teaching me new things from the start. I mean, beginning with the arrival of D. W. Griffith in LA in 1910, it’s the first time that I was made aware that the reason that the film people who flocked to what would become Hollywoodland in California decided to go there in the first place was because the area has a way more consistent light source to be able to make movies in. I’d never even thought of it before. And in a time when ‘No Jews, Actors or Dogs Allowed’ was a familiar sign hanging on doors, we have a young Anna May Wong who was obsessed by the movies and sneaking off to visit the sets/locations and also spend hours in her local nickelodeon shows.

Without going into all the details, she finally got some acting jobs in films (while working at her father’s laundry each day after wrapping on set) and her fourth role in The Toll Of The Sea (reviewed by me here) proved to be her big break because it was the film in which Douglas Fairbanks saw her and offered her the role in his silent version of The Thief Of Bagdad (as it’s spelled on the titles of that particular movie... review will hopefully be forthcoming at some time during this next year on this blog, it’s already written).

The book then charts her career on screen in such classics as Piccadilly (as part of her European tour to help give her career a boost and reviewed in my second ever post for this blog here) and Shanghai Express for Von Sternberg, opposite Marlene Dietrich (review coming soon) whom she posed with, along with Leni Riefenstahl, for a photo at a party in Paris years before (and yes, that photo is one of the pictures which dot the book as a start to each chapter). The book talks about an important playwright lover from London as well as her hanging out with famous friends such as Paul Robeson and Emil Jannings (and wife Gussy Holl). And even a brief romantic dalliance with her leading man in a stage show at one point, a young Vincent Price.

It also covers her reception in China and details her tour of that land in 1936 (also talking about the documentary on the Chinese people she filmed as one of her projects while she was there), noting such incidents as a native cantonese speaker asking her to go back to English because of her atrocious American accent.

If I had one small criticism of the book it’s that her later years of ill health are not covered in as lengthy a fashion as I might have wanted but, then again, I don’t blame the author as the book is so well researched that one assumes that not a lot of information was as forthcoming about this period of her life as others. Or, indeed, it just may have been a shade duller than what makes for good reading. And this is a good book, make no mistake. The writer’s words flow into the mind easily and even wax quite poetic at times. 

And I was there for it... I really enjoyed this one and want to read more about the subject matter if possible (I bought another tome on the lady towards the end of last year, while attending a film at the BFI’s Anna May Wong season). 

Also, thanks to Katie Gee Salisbury, I now know what a cheongsam is and realise that this is what the Anna May Wong Barbie doll I recently purchased is probably wearing (not my China doll perhaps but, maybe my plastic effigy). And, yes, I even bought a couple of Anna May Wong quarters from the US, which is just a small reminder of the cultural impact that the lady in question has had over many generations of cinema lovers over the years. I’m not sure what the other, perhaps more sensationalist, portrayals of Wong are like but, this one is certainly a great piece of biographical writing. So, if this particular Asian star of yesteryear, who was at one time receiving over 500 fan letters a week, is your thing, then I would wholeheartedly recommend you pick up a copy of Katie Gee Salisbury’s Not Your China Doll - The Wild And Shimmering Life Of Anna May Wong. It’s an absolute banger of a book and I wish I’d read it sooner. 

Charlies Angels (2000)

 

Angel Delight

Charlies Angels (2000)
USA 2000 Directed by McG
Columbia Blu Ray Zone B

I remember when I first saw the first Charlie’s Angels movie at the cinema back in 2000. I’d remembered I half liked the TV show as a kid back in the 1970s but nothing had prepared me for this particular experience, which is easily one of the greatest American action movies of the decade coupled with art design which elevated it far beyond the expectations of its target audience. I think I saw it about five times at the cinema and, I’m glad I did because, you can’t see that cut anymore, it turns out. I’ll get to that later.

Okay, so the film opens with an earlyish example of company logo vandalism where, after the Columbia torch lady comes up, the camera pans to the side and around her into the sky next to her, before transforming into the sky around a passenger aeroplane to establish the setting for the first scene. Now cinema adaptations of old TV shows were not always successful and hadn’t quite gotten into their stride in terms of the new ones around at this time. We’d had Mission Impossible at the cinemas (which I didn’t see for at least another fifteen years, you can read my review of it here) but director McG obviously knew there would be a certain amount of cynicism attached to a remake of Charlie’s Angels, loved by so many people back in the day.

So he deals with it all right out of the starting blocks, in one of the most riveting and silly opening sequences of the year, completely winning over this audience member and, judging by how successful this first movie was, quite a lot of people. He cleverly starts it off in a slow journey with the camera around the interior of an aircraft with not an Angel in sight. Then we follow a character played by L. L. Cool J, who makes contact with a minor villain for this segment. The rich colours of the aircraft include a lot of red and the look of the film is all important in terms of bombarding the audience with some eye popping designs. Then the script does a very clever thing, after the villain reveals he has a time bomb strapped to him which is counting down... he starts watching an inflight movie which is a fake remake of the old TV series T. J. Hooker and, the two chat briefly about how they hate stupid movie remakes of TV shows. So, yeah, McG already undermines any audience reaction that the film is not, at the very least, self aware and then, he suddenly speeds everything up and piles us into an action sequence... as L. L. Cool J opens the plane doors, throws out the villain and jumps out after him. He’s joined by Lucy Liu’s Angel character called Alex mid air and, the two of them manage to get the bomb off the bad guy and then drop him, with themselves, into Cameron Diaz’s waiting speedboat, Diaz playing Angel Natalie. 

It’s at this point that L. L. Cool J takes a voice changer out of his mouth and pulls his face off, to reveal it was a mask used for the third and, behind the scenes, most important of the Angels, Dylan, played by Drew Barrymore. It was Barrymore who had already bought the rights to the show before the film went into production and it was her who stood to make a fortune from the success of the movie (and its sequel, which she did to the tune of $40 million for the first one and, although not confirmed, $80 million for the less successful but, equally fun sequel).

Then, in a brilliant move to get fans on the side of the movie even more, we hear the voice of John Forsythe, the original voice of Charlie, who is reprising the role for this and the next one, as McG takes us on a parody remake of the original TV show title sequence, including some nods in scene reconstructions from the original show. It’s brilliant, uses a new version of the original theme music over some of it and, yeah, this is the way you overcome a reluctant audience... with sheer brilliance. 

And then the film somehow manages to keep going even stronger, as it reveals the new Bosley (played by Bill Murray), a red herring villain played by Tim Curry, a brilliant action henchman, The Thin Man, played by Crispin Glover (his real life dad tried to kill James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever, reviewed here), Luke Wilson, Matt LeBlanc, Tom Green, Kelly Lynch and the truly brilliant Sam Rockwell. 

And it’s a nice enough story of industrial espionage disguising the true intentions of the villanous antagonists of the film, who really were a fairly good twist reveal about two thirds of the way through the movie. It’s another old story but any weaknesses in the script (which went through at least thirty drafts by numerous writers because they wanted to get it right... there’s a reason why this film seems so polished at all levels), which are few and far between, are more than carried by the combinations of criminally good acting, imaginative fight choreography, some amazing dance sequences and some beautiful set designs with every different scene bringing in a strong, themed colour palette significantly different from each preceding scene. 

It’s also quite innovative in terms of what they do with the camera in this one... so, for instance, those amazing high speed push/pull Vertigo-like zooms during the off circuit racing car chase or, during that same sequence, the way lorries rushing in front of each car in a side view are used as very fast transitions to cut between the two cars. It’s amazing stuff and the film is full of little jolts of brilliance like this, giving the whole production a very highly stylised feel, almost like a comic book. The director himself, if I’m remembering correctly from the time, said the film takes place in ‘Angel time’, a kind of heightened, beautiful alternative to real life... which would explain, I guess, why opening the plane door to save all the passengers at the start didn’t result in all the passengers getting sucked out to their death.

I have one big criticism with the movie plus, a fair few criticisms of the home video releases of the film. Let me get started on the thing which totally popped me out of the film and my seat when I saw this the first time at the cinema. There’s a big, bold cue at one point in the film and it’s composer Akira Ifikube’s Godzilla leitmotif. As soon as I heard this my mind was like, “No way” and I was expecting a sophisticated joke based on one or more kaiju eiga. Instead, it becomes clear after about five seconds that it’s just been used as an opening and sample base for a piece of modern techno music, which the director was using from one of many (probably no comparison for an original score where this movie goes) needle drop musical selections. So yeah, that was disappointing.

Now, the 15 rated version of the movie as released in UK cinemas is longer than any other country’s versions and stuff like a full on sequence involving nunchucks never made it to home video, which is a damn shame and should not be censored, especially since the UK always had a ban on the weapons being included in films until around about this period (yeah, you can guess what looking at a UK home video version of Enter The Dragon was like before this point... this is why God invented mulitregion players). I also happen to remember.... although nobody else I know seems to (perhaps they didn’t do multiple cinema trips like I did) that the drive through hamburger scene near the start of the movie included an exchange of dialogue with a bit of a put down by the Angels directed at the burger seller... I remember it being the only false note/crack in the ‘nice gal’ facade of the Angels and felt it was just out of place. Well, if I didn’t imagine that scene (and I’m pretty damn certain I didn’t), then I guess somebody on the film also realised it didn’t promote empathy with the angels and, the scene is significantly shorter on the home video version, for sure. 

Those minor grumbles aside though... I’d have to say that Charlie’s Angels by McG is still a pretty great art/action spectacle with some beautiful, innovative sequences which I think a lot of today’s modern film students could learn a lot of lessons from. An absolute classic which is maybe a little dated already in some of the attitudes on display but, yeah, who cares about that kind of stuff when it’s put together so well. My one warning to viewers is... don’t waste your money on the cheapo, UK Blu Ray double pack edition as I did... as the version of the sequel, Charlie’s Angel’s Full Throttle, is not the proper, full on unrated US cut of the movie, but the standard theatrical, ‘sans blood spraying every time someone gets hit in the face’ version of the film. If you want the full, unrated version of the sequel on Blu Ray, you need to pay out the extra for the US edition of the film which clearly states it has both cuts on there (as I have just done, once I discovered which print of the film was on the second disc). This is disgraceful behaviour by the UK distributors based, I would suspect, on the fact that they don’t want to shell out the cash to resubmit the longer cut to the admittedly evil UK film censors at the BBFC.

King Of The Rocket Men

Jet Pack To Where 
You Once Belonged

King Of The Rocket Men
USA 1949 Directed by Fred C. Brannon
Republic Pictures 
Imprint Films Blu Ray Zone B

It was the very early 1980s when I personally made the acquaintance of Jeff King (of the Rocket Men). Since the mid-1970s, school kids had been fed with the same four fantastic Universal serials running in the mornings of alternate school holidays... and we loved it. The big four were Flash Gordon (reviewed here), Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars (reviewed here), Buck Rogers (reviewed here) and Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe (reviewed here). But the BBC must have realised at some point that they needed to buy some fresh serials so they introduced the first of, I think I’m right in saying only three others they ever broadcast and... that was King Of The Rocket Men, starting off week nights in the old 5.40pm slot used by those other serials on their debuts (not to mention another load of great B-movie features over the years, such as the Charlie Chan, The Saint and The Falcon movies). 

Now, King Of The Rocket Men was made by the old ‘shoot ‘em up Western’ studio Republic Pictures and, yeah, even as kids I could see that they had nowhere near the same kind of budgets as their Universal counterparts. But that didn’t matter, the Republic serials had Howard and Theodore Lydecker handling their special effects, most of which were pretty good and they had a great team of stuntmen on their very energetic fight scenes, which were numerous. I’ve said it a number of times and I’ll re-iterate it here, if the bad guys and the good guys walked into a room in a Republic picture, anything that wasn’t nailed down would be used as a projectile at some point in the next two minutes.

Suffice it to say, I loved King Of The Rocket Men. As I said, the title character was Jeff King (played by the great Tristram Coffin), inventor and member of the Science Associates, who would don a rocket suit to fight off the machinations of the evil Dr. Vulcan, who would put the world in peril for a fast buck. And, while he did this, King would also have to try and find out which one of the Science Associates members actually was Dr. Vulcan (a common plot in these serials, where the villain is revealed in the penultimate or even the last episode). 

And of course, in order for the title of the serial to make sense, there’s an episode when King’s ‘secretly not dead after all’ colleague, who invented the suit and also a weapon called The Decimator (which causes much trouble during the course of the 12 chapters, due to the writers presumably not knowing the actual meaning of the term decimate) dons the rocket suit himself in order to throw suspicion off of King and rescue him from the bad guys’ clutches. Yep, it’s the old “How can Clark Kent and Superman be in the same place at the same time?” ploy but, heck, it worked for me and, if my fifth or sixth revisit to the serial now, courtesy of a beautful new Blu Ray boxed set of serials from Imprint Films in Australia, is somewhat jaded, I still found myself able to recapture some of the magic and excitement of watching this thing when I was 12 or 13 years old. 

I loved the music... and still do (can we have a CD please?) and the serial scurries along at a relatively fast pace, very much using the old ‘change the footage from last weeks cliffhanger to show how the hero is able to escape’ modus operandi that a lot of the companies used. The flying effects by the Lydecker Brothers are exactly the same as those employed to make the title character fly, at the drop of a Shazam!, in Republic’s The Adventures Of Captain Marvel serial (reviewed here), consisting of a hidden trampoline take off to flight, followed by a rigged, ‘stiff as a board on hidden wires’ dummy for the long shots. It’s silly but great stuff and it’s arguable whether it’s any better or lesser than Columbia’s trick in their two Superman serials... of just having the character turn into a cartoon version of himself after take off. 

Honestly, it may be nostalgia talking but I really loved following along with Tristram Coffin and various, assorted colleagues such as Mae Clark, a curiously age appropriate female lead (and Lois Lane-like reporter) who would have been perfect as the female love interest, if such a thing was ever brought up within the confines of the fast moving plot (it wasn’t). Imprint’s new transfer looks the best I’ve ever seen it on a home video format and, unlike other transfers I’ve seen, doesn’t feature the materialising words (A re-release) on the opening credits of each episode... so this must have been from a different master source than the ones they used to show on BBC2 back in the day. 

King Of The Rocket Men was also influential. Not only was the flying footage re-used in three other serials using the same costume - Radar Men From The Moon, Zombies Of The Stratosphere and Commando Cody: Sky Marshall Of The Universe (reviewed by me here) - all of which are included in the Imprint boxed edition, which also includes Flying Disc Man From Mars, The Invisible Monster and The Mysterious Dr. Satan... but it was also the inspiration for Dave Steven’s loving, comic book homage The Rocketeer, which was itself turned into a very badly adapted but no less entertaining movie of the same name. 

And that’s me done on King Of The Rocket Men, I think. If you are coming to this as an adult and this is your first watch... I would urge you to suspend disbelief and water down any cynicism while watching. All of you who are a child at heart, though, surely can’t fail to have a good time with this one.